


Only a bit of metal

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of ongoing drabbles concerning Zevran and Andy Tabris, herself a creation of the beautiful and talented succulentthighs on tumblr. Will eventually become explicit in later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Think of the way Zevran’s fingers might have curled over the earring when it was refused. Steady. They didn’t shake. He didn’t have to force himself steady, bearing down on those traitorous fingers in a rush of pain fueled anger that swept away everything before it, leaving him feeling empty, tired and alone in a way he’d started to think he wouldn’t ever be again.

That didn’t happen, because any such tremors, such weakness, had been forced out of those hands far too long ago for it to be there now.

A great many of Zevran’s words and smiles and reactions to the warden had, at first, been. Not false, entirely, but a show. A face, one of many he’d carefully cultivated over his lifetime to be inoffensive. Charming. Seductive, if need be, and time allowed.

Those faces, those shields, had gradually fallen before the warden, but he almost wished them back now. Slow poison as they had turned out to be, leaving him dry and brittle, likely to snap, they had grown familiar, comfortable. Now they were gone, he didn’t know what to do.

He simply wasn’t prepared for this. For only the second time in life he’d allowed himself to be swept up in the heady thrill of him and her and them, and for the second time in his life he turned on his heel and walked away.


	2. Chapter 2

In just a moment Zevran will follow that expression through to completion. His mouth will quirk to hang at the corners, crinkling the inky lines on his cheek into parentheses into smiles into cheeky, laughing grins, one by one and each by each growing larger than more sincere than his own. Until he can’t look for seeing. Until he has to bend that tawny head under the combined weight of too many truths and not enough lies.

Turn away before the warden can see the look of pained surprise chasing itself across his face. His brow furrowed into peaks and valleys, whole mountain ranges mapped out by an unskilled cartographer. He is no stranger to those heights, but he walks a stranger in the depths. Unfamiliarity breeds uncertainty breeds fear, breeds anger, and his every stumbling step along the way will be writ large. Read in that brief snap of gold on gold. The whites of his eyes flashing in the near-dark.

The fall of his hair passing before him like a wisp of cloud. Staining his breath. Dragged heavy, fluttering, protesting, falling, in and out and in. Stuck to his teeth and his lips and the words he can’t say because he doesn’t know them, no more than he knows himself in this moment. Knows only that there is a tight, hard knot of pain behind his ribs. It is cold, and heavy, and he can barely breathe around it, but he will breathe anyway. Will force words past that knot because Zevran works in silence but lives most in noise, in touch. A knife rests always at his back but before the knife there was always ever the bladed, barbed tongue. It comes more easily. Comes more naturally to him than the flush of blood to his cheeks and mouth and heart that spurred him ever on, turning him into paths of danger that adrenaline never could.

And he will fall into it easily. Gratefully.

But not yet.

Right now, his head has not yet begun to fall. That errant twitching muscle in his cheek has not yet dislodged that lock of hair from behind his ear, that proffered hand has not yet closed around that single, simple twist of metal.

Zevran is caught, here. Frozen in that moment of recoil.

Look.

The assassin, this elf, this man, has been unclothed before, delights in retelling stories featuring him in varying states of dressing and undressing and everything in between, but he has never felt so naked.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This particular chapter was an exercise in writing in-game dialogue. May or may not have been successful.

“You look at those gloves a lot. Reminiscing?”

“Ah! But of course, my dear warden!” Zevran’s mouth did that interesting thing that made Andy’s stomach dip and he let out this laugh, soft and warm as the Dalish gloves he held in his hands. “How else am I to look appropriately alluring and mysterious, I ask you? Any proper Crow worth their salt would never dream of traveling abroad without some pretty thing to clutch to their chest whilst staring melodramatically off into the middle distance. Often,” he added brightly, “you were clutched back.”

Qa) “Is any part of that true?”

Qb) “Were you were standing in front of a waterfall in this scenario?”

Qc) “When have you ever been proper?”

Qd) “Been nice talking to you, Zevran.”

Aa) Zevran’s mouth twisted. Shaped a dimple that lifted his face, but not his eyes. “For some,” he hedged. His mouth worked, struggling with a bitter taste that sat heavy on his tongue. He’d meant the words as a joke, a deflection, but he’d forgotten the first lesson any would-be jester learned: your smile was your shield. Your laugh, your armor. Without those, you had nothing. Were nothing. You were just a man in a silly costume, playing a role, and once you realized that, once you started pulling your jokes from too deep in your own chest, the audience would turn on you. Starting with yourself.

Ab) Zevran’s teeth flashed in the firelight. “Ah, you are familiar with the tradition then? Doubtless you are aware, then, also, of our other, less storied traditions? Well. I say traditions, but it is more of a, ah, a building, you see. Much like our avian cousins, Crows often have this habit of collecting such trifles as catch their interest? Pretty baubles, trophies and the like, and…” He paused, cleared his throat with a dry sound. “Suffice it to say, this was not the first such pair of gloves to cross my path. I made a point to seek them out, whenever I had the time to spare. And believe me, time was a much more valuable commodity to the Crows than my own skin. I was an investment, after all, a tool. And what good is an unrefined tool? This was a risky obsession I had developed, but an obsession it was. I persisted. Months, years would go by without seeing them, but I occasionally got lucky. Of course, I had no coin to pay for such things,” he shrugged. “So I stole them. But they all…” He averted his gaze, turning his head to look down at a split in his nail with a sudden fascination. A moment passed, then two, before he looked up again. When he did, the shadow over his face was gone and he was smiling. “Eventually, I tried making my own, unsuccessfully, I might add. Still, as such things go, it was not a total waste.” Eyes the color of warm honey sought hers out, flickered in and out of the firelight in a lazy wink. “Surely you’ve noticed that my armor is always in the finest repair, warden?”

Ac) “Exactly my point.” Zevran’s smile faded to a mere suggestion in the curve of his cheeks before he managed to pull it back up by the corners. A momentary lapse, but one he feared the warden could not help but notice. “This gift of yours. It says as much, quite often.” Zevran’s fingers tangled in the leather, counting up the spaces between the seams. “A proper Crow would have discarded it long ago. Used it to my advantage until I tired of it, until it had fallen apart to bits and pieces between my hands.”

Qa) “But not for you.”

Qb) “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Qc) “I’m not a pair of gloves, Zevran.”

Aa) “Ah.” His smile flickered, tugged one way or the other until finally he sighed, tucking the smile away as he would a blade. His hands still clutched the Dalish gloves Andy had gifted him with. They tightened, bunching the leather until his knuckles whitened before he forced himself still with a smile and a shake of his head, putting them away. “No. And yes.”

Ab) “Do you not?” He tossed his head back and laughed like a player. It was a player’s act, too, meant to distract, to pull attention away from a misstep, a forgotten line. “My most sincere apologies, warden. I was mistaken. It must have been the Qunari whose eyes I felt roaming my backside, no? Quite right, too. If you’ll excuse me, I must prepare myself for his tender mercies.”

Ac) “Are you not?”

 

Qa) “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
Qb) —-  
Qc) “No.” Andy stepped close, into Zevran’s space, putting him back on his toes. She reached out and caught his hands between her own, pulling him closer when he made to pull away. “You’re going to have to try harder than that to get rid of them. Of me. I’m not some Orlesian sow’s ear, now am I? I ride a lot harder and wear easier than that. If I am gloves, than I am these,” she said, nodding toward the gloves. “Those are the result of a lifetime’s study. No wonder you kept mucking it up, trying it out yourself. They won’t rip and tear at the first sign of trouble, I’ll have you know. They’re meant for battle, for- for working with your hands. Mending things, playing cards, holding-” Andy caught the word on her tongue just in time, turned it into a smile. “They’re meant to last for life. So do us both a favor and shut up, yeah?”

Aa) “It means, warden,” Zevran ground out stiffly, offended dignity written in every inch of his body, “that if you wished someone to roll over and show their belly at your command, you’d have been better off speaking to your dog. Either of them.” (-15 approval)  
Ab) —  
Ac) Zevran swallowed against the thickness building at the back of his throat. His hands turned in hers, brushing the barest edge of a callused fingertip across her scarred knuckles. “As my warden commands,” he said with a smile. It was small, but building, and she could feel his chest twitch against her face as he pulled her in close. Laughing, or crying. She pulled back to look at his face, but before she could he’d seized her face and pressed such kisses to her mouth and her cheeks and her ears that was left breathless, giddy and clutching to his shoulders for fear she’d fall otherwise. Just float up into the sky without something to hold on to, she thought with a breathy laugh, and surged forward to capture his lips with her own. (+15 approval)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Possible end-game scenario.

This time was not like the first.

It was not nearly so rushed as the first, so breathless, so full of breaths, stolen. Shared, breathed in one set of lungs and out into the other. Not nearly so sharp and soft all at once, full of teeth and tongue and noses, eyes, ears, anything and everything they’d been able to reach. Andy’s enthusiasm had overwhelmed even Zevran’s determination to stretch things out that night. He’d fumbled like a green boy with his first lover, blushing and laughing with her when they bumped noses as both of them dove for clothes at the same time, husky laughter joining together in the space between them. Until that, too, fell discarded and forgotten, along with everything else. For a time.

This was not that time.

Or the second, a bloody, messy affair. They’d been fighting, arguing over his past and his future and where that was or wasn’t and they’d ended up on the ground, legs locked around each other’s middles and scratching, clawing at each other, at whatever they could reach. Baring their teeth and rolling in the dust like the street children they’d been, like the warriors they were. He’d grabbed a hand, and she’d grabbed his hair, yanked until he saw stars. He got a leg in between hers, forced her up and at an angle where it’d be difficult for her to get enough leverage to hit him while still holding onto his hair, and grinned breathlessly down at her for a moment, forgetting in that moment just who she was. So she hit him with a rock.

This was not the first time, or the fifth, the twentieth, but what may well be the last. There was no laughing, no tickling or desperate, heated kisses that burned all the way down like a good fight, a good shot to the gut.The night air was still and quiet, hushed. Undisturbed saved for the soft, wet sounds of a heart being torn in two, moans choked against skin and open ended-sighs breathed out, hanging heavy in the air, unanswered. This time, this last time, there were no words. No declarations of intent or promises made, promises kept and promises broken. Just those that went unspoken, slipping away in the silence between every missed gaze, ever choked sob disguised as a moan.

In the morning, they would begin the last leg towards Denerim, and whatever awaited them. In the morning, someone would die. They both knew. Knew by the widespread slide of fingers on sweat-slicked skin that the other knew it too. That they were afraid. For each other, for themselves. For the thought of living, of finding the other defeated or worse. Victorious. But they did not speak of it. They didn’t need to.

This was not the first time, or the eleventh, when such words had been necessary, wanted. Needed. Here, now, they weren’t wanted. They weren’t needed. Words would break the fragile peace they’d erected in these walls of fabric and blood and bone, render baldly things that needed a gentler touch. Fingers trailed through whispering falls of hair. Across knots of scars and stretchmarks and what bits of finery they had. Everything that needed saying had already been said, better said.

All there was left to do was this one thing, this final thing. The last thing. And then they could go.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly, mama Tabris feels.

“Adaia, can you please try to-“

“Andridanya again?” Adaia blew her hair away from his face with a laugh masquerading as a sigh. She smiled apologetically at the elven woman before her, a neighbor (but they were all neighbors weren’t they, in every sense of the word, because they had to be, because this world left them no choice) whose own boy was a little older than Andy, almost three now. “She hit him again.”

“She hit him again!” The woman glanced a look back at where her crying son sat on the stoop, then back to Adia. Behind the woman’s back, Adaia watch Andridanya sneak up behind the little boy (as well as a babe could sneak, all big, exaggerated gestures she’d tried to copy from Adaia and failed, her wee little tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in concentration), push him over, and then sit on his chest.

“I’ll deal with it.”Adaia said quickly, cutting the woman off mid-sentence with an apologetic grin. She darted away before the woman had time to turn around again. Keeping as much of her body in the way as possible to block the line of sight, she lifted Andridanya off of the boy and set him on his feet, then kissed his forehead and sent him off with a pat on the head before turning to look back at the fruit of her loins.

Andridanya had to know she was in trouble, but she glared a terribly ferocious glare up at Adaia anyway, cheeks puffed out as she stomped a foot, little hands fisted at her sides. They were shaking a little as Adaia continued to look at her in silence, but she wasn’t crying. Andridanya rarely did.

“Andridanya ves Tabris,” Adaia said sternly, all smile gone from her voice now as she looked her daughter square in the eye, keeping hold of Andridanya’s chin so she couldn’t turn away, “I am very disappointed in you. I thought I was raising a warrior, not a bully. What could he have done to deserve that?”

Andridanya kicked at the ground and muttered something.

“What?”

“‘e called me that.” She was looking away now, slightly behind and to the left of Adaia’s face. Adaia moved her chin back to facing her.

“Called you what?”

“That.”

“What,” Adaia said slowly, with growing suspicion. “Andridanya?”

“‘s.”

“That’s your name. What else should he call you?”

“‘s poncy,” Andridanya told Adaia’s forehead. “Hate it. I like Andy. Father says Andy.”

“Your father,” Adaia replied, moving right past ‘poncy’ and where her daughter may or may not have heard it, “wasn’t raised like I was. Names are important. They’re your first weapons, long before you are capable of holding them or recognizing them at all. I tried to give you the best I could. It’s a fine name, a fine blade to use against anyone who would try to take it away from you.”

“Like Rathe?” Andridanya asked, clearly meaning the little boy, and Adaia shook her head.

“You’ll find out soon enough. Sooner than I’d like. But don’t worry,” she smiled, bending low to scoop her girl up in her arms and kissed her pudgy face and hands and tummy until she squealed. “That’s one weapon they can never take away, not really. I’ll always be there to show you where it’s hid, if you forget. Maybe one day, you’ll be able to do the same for me.”


	6. Chapter 6

It had become a habit of his to rise from his bedroll each night, long after the others had retired, and return to the fireside.

It’d begun some time ago, as a way to work off some of the remaining energy of the day in a time and manner that would cause the least amount of distress to his heavily armed companions, but as of late he found himself lingering. Loath to leave the illusion of comfort the fire provided for his tent. His thoughts grew too loud and too numerous with those close confines, and there were only so many times one could take the problem in hand, so to speak. It was possible to say, if he’d been willing to admit such things even within the privacy of his own mind, that that was why he’d started coming out here. But he did not.

It was enough to rock on the balls of his feet, luxuriating in the burn and stretch settle into his muscles. He’d be overtired tomorrow, he thought with no small amount of self-satisfaction. He would need concentration enough and more to keep up with the group, with none to spare on such thoughts as had been plaguing him of late. Thoughts of the Landsmeet, of what that would mean, warred with other, darker distractions, with thoughts of his mother, of Andy, and he slumped down beside the woodpile. Let himself drift off, be lulled by the quietude into inattention. Time slipped away, he wasn’t sure how much. Later, he figured that he must have stood there for some length of time judging by the growing light on the horizon, but at the time it felt like minutes had gone by, seconds, when every passing second hadn’t felt like the passing of days. Long enough, anyway, to have grown stiff. Long enough too, for the guard to rotated out. He’d paid half a mind to the rise and fall of Morrigan’s voice on the other side of camp as she spoke to her replacement. Enough that’d he’d known who it was, even without the confirmation of a voice to tell him so. He’d been aware of the sound of footsteps for some time, recognizing even in his distraction the distinctive heavy tread of Andy Tabris’s heavy boots circling the camp, and had been able to put it from his mind until a sudden, and complete silence fell over the camp.

He blinked, once, and looked up just as a hand reached out and plucked the Dalish Gloves from his hands. He looked and into Andy’s smiling face. Her eyes caught the firelight and held it, flat green mirrors reflecting nothing of himself and everything that was her. The teasing lilt to her laugh, as precious to him now as when they had first met, when he’d had to work to surprise it out of her. Now, it rolled out in waves, a rich, deep chuckle that drew him ever onward. She gripped his gloves up in her scarred fingers, the honey coloured leather brushing whispered kisses against her wrists, his mouth, as she flapped them teasingly close. He made a half-hearted grab at them, because that was clearly what was asked of him now. As expected, Andy danced back out his reach, passing the gloves hand to hand behind her back.

“Ah-ah,” she sing-songed, bending at the waist to favor him with a smile and a truly excellent view down her nightshirt which, admittedly, was probably not the intention, but he was and had always been a man to count his blessings wheresoever he saw them, and those breasts were certainly a gift from some kind benevolent creator, if there was one. He wondered, not for the first time, what he could possibly have done to earn such favor from this hypothetical mother figure in the sky, and decided it was probably best not to dwell on it. So he merely smiled an open-mouthed smile that had more than a hint of tooth.

“So, it is to be like that, is it? Very well, I shall play your game, Madame, but know that I play to win.” Her answering grin told him all he needed to know about her answer. He made another grab for it, bringing him flush against her. Zevran went very still for a space of a shuddered breath, suddenly very aware of the press of armored skin against his chest.

Andy quirked those fabulous crimson brows. She gave a short, sharp bark of a laugh, wiggling her shoulders in that private little victory dance he didn’t think she was fully aware of doing, clearly pleased with herself. “Still think you’re winning?” She leaned up on her tip-toes and pressed her lips to the edge of his mouth, mouth parting to nip at the dark splash of a freckle on his lower lip. Zevran opened his mouth to suck in a startled breath and she followed after, taking it as the invitation it surely was and had always been. Devoured his mouth and tongue and breath and he staggered, breath coming short and hard, scraping at his throat all the way down. Andy’s chest heaved in time with his, each time bringing their mouths crashing together. It was not a gentle kiss. Tonight, he did not think he could have born gentleness, and Andy seemed to know it. Tilted her head to take advantage of his shock, chased after his tongue with her own with little panted breaths and back and bit, sucking at his lower lip.

This was different than the kisses they’d shared before, small ones, big ones, ones with no real intent or aim beyond the kiss itself, the feel of hands carding through hair and down to seek out those places that made each other sigh and twist. This was sharp, and demanding. All encompassing. There was hesitance in Andy, no holding back. It was all teeth and tongue and heat. The rough drag of nails through his hair, pulling him closer and pushing him away all at the same time. Zevran shuddered and released his breath on a groan, bringing his hands up to the small of her back. There to grab fistfulls of whatever he could, buckles and hair and hands, brown leather gloves.

Andy gasped a surprised laugh against him and twisted, laughing against his mouth as he tugged on the gloves, and made as if to pull away. Zevran’s free hand tightened against the small of her back, reeling her back in. His other hand smoothed over the gloves and up to her fingers, lacing a crown. Their joined fingers bent to Andy’s back, nudging her within the spread of Zevran’s open legs. Counted up her rocky spine and all the spaces between, becoming lost in the swell of her hip. At last Andy reached a hand up to tangle in the lengths of his hair, drawing him closer with a needy noise that he swallowed up, traded for every sobbed, broken breath that spilled out between them.

The gloves fell, unnoticed, at her back. Zevran drew their joined hands up between them and pushed, nudging Andy back on her heels, off-balance. He kept advancing, nipping and suckling at the curve of her throat until her knees wobbled, until her hand tightening in his hair was her only link to solid ground, the only indication of her discomfiture at all, while he was the one clutching at her like a drowning man. He was dizzy, dizzied by taste of her and the reality of her, here. His hands, usually so sure, lost all sense of purpose. He fumbled, just for a moment, and laughed to cover up that fleeting moment of panic. He looked up to grin and pass it off but she was closer than he remembered, kiss-swollen lips inches from his. Her breath stirred the hairs on his neck, making him shiver despite himself, as did that look in her eyes, the sudden intensity that was not so sudden at all. He opened his mouth to say something witty, something that would dissolve the tension in the air, but nothing came out. Nothing but half-formed words, prayers to an uncaring god and to the goddess here before him.

She wasn’t laughing with him. Her hands gentled, sliding down the shell of his ear to his face. This time it was he that couldn’t help the noise that escaped him now. It was small, and desperate, and he had to close his eyes against it for just a moment, because this was not how it should go, he thought wildly. This was too much, too soon. He was suave, and removed, a man of mystery who most certainly didn’t swoon, but here he was, and here she was, his woman of mystery. Her hair had tumbled loose from its messy bun, tangling up in everything and everyone, blowing in and out of her mouth with every heaved breath. Her cheeks were very red, and she was smiling, at him. She looked a sight, muddy and sweaty and undignified and so achingly beautiful that his hands kept rising up to touch her without his meaning to. She caught them in hers, stepping back onto her own feet, pulling her with him. Now he was the one off-balance, stumbling after her as she caught him up and dragged him down by his shoulders, kissing every bit of him she could reach. His cheeks, his nose, the tips of his ears. That one got her a whine, and so she did it again, and again.

“Hey, now,” he said breathlessly into the artless twist of her mouth, “this is worth a moment of consideration,” he kissed her again, thoroughly, before pulling back again, leaving her kissing empty air. “I shall forever after remember our first encounter thusly. Resplendent and glistening in the night, myself restrained at your feet, helpless to resist your advances. ‘Oh, warden,’ I would cry, ‘be gen-’” He ended on a strangled sound when Andy bit his ear again, choking him on a laugh that emerged as a moan.

“Gentle?” Andy turned up her hands to his cheeks and dug in with just the barest edge of her nails, tracing the whorled edge of his tattoos. “That’s not what I heard about Antivan massages.” Her teeth flashed in the near-dawn light and then she stepped back, out of the circle of his arms and towards her tent, a clear invitation he was helpless to resist, and he said as much. Laughing, but only just, because the back of her legs had hit the flap of her tent and kept going, and he was already moving, tugged as surely as if her hands had still been on him. She didn’t need to crook a finger or make any one of the other seductive gestures or words he’d heard from previous lovers in the past. The sound of her armor hitting the ground was enough, more than, to spur him onward into her tent. And for a while, at least, their cares were set aside for someone else to mind. The world passed them by unnoticed.

It was some time before they spoke again, in the minutes afterward. Time passed in companiable silences filled only with soft sighs and softer sounds, the whisper of skin against skin and the tiny, unnoticed crunch of Zevran’s heart.

He broke away from her with a bright and brittle smile, ignoring for the moment the small, disappointed noise Andy made as cold rushed in to fill the spot against her side he’d previously filled, and reached down, tugging her to her feet. “Come, my dear warden,” he said, tugging her to her feet and towards the flap of her tent. Andy immediately started to protest, reaching a hand for the scattered bits of her armor, but Zevran gave her hand another tug, gently this time. “No one is there to see,” he said. “And what if there was? Who could not look upon you and go weak with desire, mm?” He tugged on her hand again, and while Andy still looked dubiously towards her clothes, she took a step after him.

“A lot of people.” Her lips twisted, whether out of reluctance or at the thought of, say, her father of Wynne, he could not say and did not want to ask. Just kept smiling, kept tugging on her hand until at last she picked up her feet and put one in front of the other, taking care to keep Zevran in between herself and the other tents. He graciously chose not to comment on this, out of consideration for her sensibilities, though he was not so considerate that he didn’t keep half an eye behind him. The early morning light cast Andy in shades of gold and of pink. Darkened her secret places to a deliciously curve that would never fail to leave him breathless. Ooops. She’d caught him staring. Zevran couldn’t hide the smile that took him now, a real, true smile that lit up the whole of his face. He turned to look her full in the face, rather pointedly let his eyes drop to wander across her bared form, taking in the sights with a slow and studied appreciation. She was blushing all the way down to her chest by the time he was done, a fact he mentally filed away for later perusal before finally turning away.

The gloves were right where they’d left them, slightly dampened by the morning dew but otherwise unmarked, for which he was grateful. He dusted them off and turned to take in Andy, and for a moment, for the second time, he was struck by the

Gave a little shake and recovered his smile. “I’ve thought of a use for for your gift.”

“A use?” Andy frowned, hurt flashing briefly in those proud eyes, hurt sparking the first flash of that temper he’d marked when they’d first met. “You want to know what you can do with those gloves, Zev-“

Zevran hurriedly lifted his hands to pat the air in a calming gesture, looking contrite. “Ah! My apologies, warden, perhaps I spoke too quickly. I merely meant that gifts are meant to be used, are they not? And these gloves are far too fine for the likes of me.”

Half a lie, the better half. He’d never worn them himself, never thought to, but it was easy as breathing now to bring that captured hand close, to tug leather gone soft and warm by shared body heat. Andy went very still, breath getting lost somewhere between her lungs and her throat as bent his head to press his lips to every every knuckle, every split and crack and callous. That hard edge to her mouth was fading, now, eased not by the press of his lips or his words but by his face. His eyes, wide and solemn over that laughing smile, the way he gripped her hands in his, brushing the pad of his thumb over every inch of bare skin before it vanished beneath the glove. Like another sort of kiss, quieter. This wasn’t part of any pageantry put on for her benefit, or his. It was what it was. The briefest bit of contact, smaller than the others that had just passed between them but so, so much more heavy, weighed with meaning and implications.

He broke eye contact first, down to the gloves, and after a brief hesitation, she followed suit. The lines of her hand were softened and accentuated all at once, nearly invisible stitchery winding gracefully spiraling trails up the back of her wrists to pool in her palm. Her fingertips. The back of her hand, where the padding was thickest across the knuckles. Zevran brushed his lips there, and at the dip in her wrist where her pulse jumped up to meet him, pounding with every fluttering beat of her heart. “Perfect fit.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Andridanya?”

Andy jumped, fouling up her bootlaces as she spun around with a sound that a kind person would have called a sputter and anybody else would have called a squeak, nearly tripping herself up and falling straight back down on her ass. She looked up at where Zevran stood with her other boot in hand, gaping up at him in the most profound horror. She hadn’t really thought through her decision to wet her feet, or maybe it would have occurred to her that, yes, he could and would come round making comments, that would also mean that her high-maintenance assassin could and would make off with her other boot while she was distracted, clearly intending to polish it or hide it, or. Lift up the cuff to get at a speck of dirt underneath where, yes, there was a line of stitching in Adaia’s familiar hand. Andridanya ves Tabris, it read, in little curly q’s of vines and leaves, all intertwined and folded in on each other in such a way that she’d been really, really hoping he wouldn’t ever notice, but his smile was just getting bigger and her face was getting hotter and then he was laughing.

“CAN YOU NOT,” she sputtered, ducking her eyes away and off to the side, but he was still laughing, that smokey trailing chuckle that twisted up her guts somewhere around the area of her mouth. She ground her teeth together until they hurt, lips pursed into a thin white line that was definitely not anywhere near approaching a smile, because here he was moving in front of her with that twist of his shoulders that put his smile right up close to her face, and there was only one thing to do in that situation.

She hit him.

Hauled back and socked him right in the jaw, putting the whole of her considerable strength into it so that he staggered back, surprise deadening his limbs just long enough for her to barrel into them, into him, bringing them both crashing to the ground. At least, she had meant to. Intended to land on him, bear the more lightly armored elf into the ground under her plate, but he’d already been in motion when she’d collided with him, bringing his legs up to curl round her middle and hips in such a way that she would have found very interesting had it not meant that he somehow ended up on her back, and she’d ended up with her chin planted deep into the grass. Andy snarled and spit and reached back over her head, gripped him by the hair and hauled. Got her teeth into the soft skin between his throat and his ear and bore down, piercing the skin and flooding her mouth with the taste of metal.

Zevran gritted out something Antivan against her hair, ruffling it with little puffs of warm air. His fingers caught up in the length of her hair for a moment, lingering light touches that caught up in a wispy curl. Then it caught, and held. She didn’t even feel him move until she was already in the air, the earth and the sky spiraling past her feet in a confusion of light and sensation, the sun a pinpoint glimmer in her eyes, and for a moment she felt this terrible, fierce joy catch in her throat--

And then was moment was gone. She came crashing back down in a tangle of limbs and teeth and metal. Zevran landed on her chest, hard, elbows leading. He was still speaking, something rough and guttural and heavy, bearing down on her ribs in more ways than one. She felt something crack in her chest and it wasn’t a rib, no more than it was a knife at her hip. Somehow, her hands wound up in his hair, hauling his head back for better access, suckling, biting, trailing firery kisses up the length of his neck so that he was left shaking and gripping at her hips. Dug his nails into the dip where her legs joined and whatever she’d been growling trailed off into a moan that wrung her out top to bottom, shivering and aching and grabbing at anything within reach. Pressing her lips to the sweat and blood and dirt and dust that gathered at his temples, near sobbing at the needy sound he made.

He started to laugh, quiet, panted little peals of laughter that made her bite him, just to hear those pants turn into a strangled noise. They did, and when he opened his mouth to speak she bit him again, and again, opening her mouth to draw the reddened skin between her teeth and bite down, hard, smirking triumphantly against his skin when his hands started to shake on the buckles of her armor, just a bit. They were still fighting, after all, but now the field of battle was changed, the stakes raised. And she fought to win.

She was already turning into him when the first outer layer of armor was peeled back to fall away, arching up with a gasp as his hands dove beneath, seeking out those places he knew elicited the sweetest sounds, the most delicious reactions, all those little shifting sighs and twisting turns of her body up and away all at same time that only got worse, he recalled, when he spoke. So he did. Lowered his mouth down to the delicate curve of an ear and began to whisper things. Beautiful things, filthy things, meant for her and her alone. It had ever been thus. With some few of his couplings, his mind had inevitably wandered away to one of his more well-thumbed fantasies, but with this warden, this woman, he had only ever been able to look at her, see her. The thought did unpleasant things to his insides. Twisted them up and turned them inside out, made worse by the noises she made, the look on her face as she stared up at him through eyes gone hazy and half-lidded with desire. “Is this what you desire, warden?” His hand was moving still, unceasing. tickling small circles up and down the fine hairs on the underside of her arm and back, moving lower to trace the curve of a breast and then away, down the other arm. “To be touched? Worshipped?” Here, there, his fingers caressed lower, lower. Flickering, teasing touches that made her growl and buck, making him gasp, his fingers stuttering, almost, to a halt.

“I desire, Zevran,” Andy panted, face flushed and screwed up with impatient, frustrated desire, “to have you on your back, right now.” She heaved at his chest. Zevran toppled over without resistance. Andy followed him down. Braced her hands on his shoulders and settled back against his lap, trapping him snug between her thighs. “I desire unconditional and complete surrender. And I’m gonna get it.”

Zevran’s answer was silent but emphatic, a slow rolling of his hips. His hands came up as hers went down. He threaded his hands through her lovely, thick tresses, down to press between her breasts, where lay her heart. He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Whatever was going on behind those furrowed brows, he was deadly serious in his pursuit of it, of her. “You think so?” He murmured, mouth going soft at the corners. “Oh, dear. Whatever shall a humble Crow do against such a fearsome opponent, I wonder. Surely resistance is pointless. There is, after all, no way a warden would ever consider surrender or retreat, you are all far too hotheaded.” His teeth flashed in another one of those small, private smiles she suspected weren’t actually meant for her and let his hands fall to clasp her thighs. “All is lost.”

Andy settled back her haunches and huffed, rolling her eyes. “What kind of win is that?” She complained. “You’re not allowed to quit either. Didn’t you say-”

“Ah, but Crows are also notorious liars,” he told her cheerfully. “There are many ways to interpret the same truth. For example: when I claimed that there was no way to make a warden surrender or retreat, I was of course not referring to this.” He leaned up, pulling her down with a hand on the back of her neck to press burning kisses to her neck and shoulders and arms, then back.

“Zevran,” she growled as he bypassed her mouth yet again, leaving her kissing nothing but empty air, “do I look like one of your noblewomen?” She’d asked him that before, and every time, just like now, he raised his head just as the last vestiges of some large, unnameable emotion darkened her eyes to that rich colour glimpsed only in the twilight hours in certain old forests, and for a moment he was breathless, struck dumb and blind by what he saw in her face.

He opened his mouth to say yes, say no. Say all of the thousand, thousand things that waited on the tip of his tongue and mind and lips, clamoring to be said. “You look,” he told that shadowed spot behind her ear, “like a warrior risen out of legend. A goddess. You look like” nothing so much and so less as herself, and all that that meant, “the woman before me now. You may not have noticed, my dear warden, but you are rather demanding. All of everyone’s attention cannot help but be focused on you,” mouthed to the underside of her chin, licked up that sensitive little spot that made her hands spasm and clutch, her breath come faster against the crown of his hair. “On you,” he repeated, chanted almost, into her ear. He took the soft point between his teeth and bit down, gave it a tug until she came apart between his arms, her every muscle jumping beneath him and under and against him, until she whimpered and swore and pushed him away.

He went gladly, following the inside curve of her arm back down her breast, nudging the last of her armor and clothes out of the way, baring her to his eyes and mouth and hands. He nuzzled the swell of her breast with his cheek, breathing such praises into her skin. That she was beautiful, here, along the curve of an old scar, lipping at it. A masterpiece, there, along the curving arch where skin met skin. This whole process was made rather more difficult by the consistent grind of her hips against his, the dull scrape of her nails and teeth and eyes. She panted harshly, mouth parted. A certain twist of his hand between her legs and she gave a shudder that traveled down the length of her body, rocking her against him. Against her hand, already dipped beneath his leathers to the hard length of him. Her touch was shockingly electric. He jerked and bucked up into her hand, at last opening his mouth on that moan she so loved.

“I thought assassins were supposed to be quiet,” she laughed breathlessly, bending low. Her hair tickled his face and reaching hand. She gripped it up in hers and brought it down to the space between them, where they brushed together, separated only by cloth and all the words said and unsaid between them. Wrapped their joined hands around him and began to stroke. Slow, her hand tightening with his on the upstroke, her shuddering with him as their knuckles rubbed and bumped against that tight ache, and down, twisting. He felt like velvet, like silk and iron and the touch of gloved fingers against her spine, gripping and releasing and grinding down at that spot in the small of her back that made her cry out. That drove her down, spread her wide and full and open and smiling, always, at him. At him, and the fight and the dance and the sweet, slow build of coiling heat at the base of her spine. At the sound of him, the feel of his hand seeking and finding her. She nearly sobbed at the first touch, biting down on an even more undignified sound, he was still teasing, damn him, he was so close to it but he wasn’t-

At the furrowed wrinkle between his eyes, asking, again, if this was what she wanted, how she wanted it.

“Tell me you don’t get tired of saying that.” Her eyes loomed before him, looming huge and bright. Her pupils blown wide, flickering behind her lashes with every touch, every whispered breath. Every sweep of his fingers, his eyes. Maker, he didn’t even need to touch her, she thought for a giddy moment, before she remembered herself, remembered the point of the thing. “You don’t want to just- ah!” He’d found it at last. The first brush of his fingers burned, as it always did, always a surprise and always, always making her choke, making her throat close down against the threat of tears. She could taste them on the back of her throat, salt and water and blood, blood remembered and blood forgotten.

Made her bury her face against his neck, as she always did, bear down upon him even as he lifted her up, parted her with the tip of a finger then back up, brushing against again and again, but only just. Made her curse and laugh and bite, there, just where the pulse jumped in his throat where she could feel it, too, in his prick, in the fall and lift, the yawning gulf between one breath and the next. It was dizzying, dizzied, all she had linking her to the ground were the places they touched. Her hands, his forehead, the rosy tip of a nipple where it disappeared against his lips, where he smiled, drew it into his mouth. The muscles in her legs jumped when his other hand fell to grip, just there, spreading her legs to either side of him.

He was still talking. Even now. Whispered things, muffled things, muffled by her hair and by distance and by the work of his tongue, flickering back and forth, suckling her and breathing her in and driving her mad. Beyond madness. To that place where there was no hesitation, no embarrassment in the rising up to shimmy out of her pants, no more than there was in getting down her knees before him and taking him into he mouth, all of him. Hollowing out her cheeks and drawing her tongue down the long vein on the underside of the shaft.

In taking their joined hands and putting it in her hair. Gripping the firery stands and pushing her down until he hit the back of her throat. Pressed her nose deep into wirery curls and held, until she felt him shudder. Felt it in the press of him, in the desperate, needy sounds building up his chest to be caught in his throat, lost, he was stuttering, floundering on a joke, a praise, instructions or orders or any one of a hundred hundred things he wasn't saying. He'd stopped talking. She smiled around him and hummed. Zevran jerked and moaned a very rude sounding phrase, lifting her up by the hair only to force her down again, fingers fisting tight in her hair, moaning. Something. She couldn’t make it out over the wet slap of skin on skin, over her own moans.

Andy let him slip from her mouth. Lifted her head to look him in the face, to ask, and he met her halfway there. Licked a tingling line between her lips until she parted for it, for him. His tongue clashed with hers, swirled up and under and around as his hands had done, just days before, when teaching her how to dance, turning it this way and that, first his taking the lead then her, suckling greedily on his tongue, pulling it deep into her mouth as she moaned, pulling him tighter and closer together even as she ground down against his hand.

For all his experience, all his careful, considered flirtations and advances and retreats disguised as just one more advance, Zevran was undone faster, fell farther, coming apart between her hands and the tight, slick feel of her, and so it was not perfect. The kiss was rough. Artless and unfeigned and imperfect. They bumped heads, twice, fouling up her hair in his nose and her earing and there was too much teeth and not enough tongue, clawing hands and muffled, choked cries. It tasted like him, like her, like salt and sweat and need and other, indescribable flavours that sat heavy on her tongue, made her shudder and tighten around his fingers, buried still between her legs. Made her remind him, again, that she was not some fancy lady to be pampered and coddled for weeks before being bedded, Zevran, get on with it. “Oh, but you are.” His other hand joined the first, dipping first one finger inside her and then the other. Arched, arching up to find that spot that made her see stars, made her clutch and curl and bite her lip until it bled against the wild, exultant laughter she could feel bubbling up inside her chest, no more appropriate or sensical that her tears, and she’d opened her mouth to explain when he added a third finger, his thumb. Bent it and twisted, opening her up wide, baring her to him. Andy twisted and scrabbled at his back with her hands, at his armor, he still had it on, what was he doing, it was almost like-

“You are the noblest woman I have ever met.” And then he was moving, pushing inside her in one long, slow torturous glide, and he was talking again. “When I think of what my life would have been if you and I hadn’t chanced to meet that day,” his whispered against her temples, her breasts, leaning back to kiss a searing trail down the line of her chest, pulling her close, closer, until her voice cracked, until she could feel the wild, rampant heart deep within his crack with her, for her, because he’d stopped again, couldn’t go on, because he-

His voice died, stillborn on his tongue, to fall and lie, hidden among trailing kisses and trailing lips. Hands that gripped and hands that pulled, seating her, hard, hitting that same spot over. and. over again. Relentless, slow, maddening, punishing strokes. She could feel every inch of him slide almost all the way out of her, until just the tip remained. He glided back and forth against her, mimicking sex, and for a moment she near lost her head with the maddening emptiness, the lack of him, the near overwhelming urge to pull him close, closer, until they lost themselves, until they couldn’t tell which way was up or which arm belonged to her, until she caught that look in his eye, the one unfinished, always finished and yet never, and she caught herself. Held still. She would not whine, and she would not beg, and she would not lose.

“Zevran,” she growled, lowly, grabbing him up by his hair and pulling, forcing him to look her in the eyes, and there she was caught held, almost losing herself again in the look on his face, the pained cant to his mouth and brows and the sudden desperate grasp on her hips, and then she was slamming down her hips, wringing out a moan from him that climbed and broke on the shores of her, breaking down on the edge to her tight grasp on him, around him. His breath broke, shattered, falling to pierced shards as she worked him against her, within her, building. He was close, she could feel it, his strokes gone erratic. How unlike him. She lunged and bit down, driving the points of her teeth down into the meat of his shoulder just as he started to shake, pulling her down onto him once, twice, more in shuddering release. “Andridanya.” He let out his last gasp of air as a prayer, supplication and thanksgiving. His hands climbed the shifting planes of her, reaching towards the sky, to the sun still gathered in her eyes. And there was something else, something just on the edge of hearing. She caught it not as sound but as sensation. It was in his face. His breath. The careful grip of his hands, fitted to the where she needed him most.

He moved still, within her. Softened, now, the feel of it was different, he was different. Softer, curling his legs around her until she was was fit to him, angles to curves to upturned faces and the golden stars within them. Their hands found each other, fingers to callouses to scars to each other. Her mouth sought his. Found it. Found victory and peace and that last, little remaining bit of them before the world went white, narrowing down on the slick slide of him, of her, of them. His other hand had dropped, unnoticed, between them and now it pressed back against her as she started to shake. Worked her clit, rolling it between her thumb and forefingers until her whole body snapped taught. Until she threw her head back and screamed, her whole body clenching down around him. He pulled her closer, pushed closer, riding out the spiraling aftershocks until she stilled.

Rested her forehead against him while she caught her breath. Let herself tip and slipped over his shoulders to curl up beside him on the grass, her face pillowed his chest. She yawned, smothering it against his armpit, where she may or may not have known he was ticklish, making him squirm, but could do little more than lazily swat in her general direction. “Hey,” he heard her say just his eyes slipped closed. “You said it first. That means I won.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was howling down rain when they stepped off the boat. Pissing it. Crashing down on the wood with a sound like a sigh, like the fall of rice upon stone, like murmured conversation overheard through a pane of glass. It was like all of these things, and none of them. It was like rain. Like falling water that came down and came up and came at you sideways, so loud every conversation turned into a shouting match.

Zevran had already breathed out a sigh as a laugh and turned to pass along that old joke about the rain being why they grew so many weeds in Antiva, neh? And stopped.

Andy had stepped out from under the awning. Turned her face up to the sky and tried to catch the first falling drops on her tongue like snowflakes, eyes closed, droplets of the purest silver gathering to dust her eyelashes. To speckle dots across her clothes. To plaster her hair to her scalp. Washed her glorious ringlets away and down her back to gather in her hips, her feet. The pale arch of a bare foot on bare wood. Toes twinkling across the deck. She was laughing, lifting her hands to cup the air before her. Puddles collected in her palms and trailed slick lines down the length of her arms, tracing a second skin of water and cotton and raised bumps. Making her shiver and throw out her arms in a spray of water and hair, laughing at the look on his face, because she only saw the curving shadow of a smile, not the wonder that had preceded it, or the quick catch of air. The last gasp before the fall. She’d missed it, had caught only the shock of freefall, the helpless laugh of a man caught in the gravity of something bigger than he was. The arms extended to pull her in against his chest for an embrace, to catch his heart between his ribs before it flew away to join her in a dance he had never known. The steps were strange, and frightening, step, step, and leap, bigger, father, and he looked up to ask, to tell, and she was already there, gathering him in the circle of her arms and pulling him out under the falling curtain.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> succulentthighs:
> 
> When Andy gets really drunk she writes Zevran poems and folds them up and leaves them in his boots
> 
> and he finds them the next morning and is just really confused and also in love and junk
> 
> Edit/ and he keeps all of them and sends them back to her one by one with replies, when hes in Antiva
> 
> I love them so muhhuhuch

The letter was waiting on her desk when she came limping in from the long patrol. She glanced it over disinteredly, rubbing at itchy, overtired eyes with a mailed fist when she caught a letter, a swirl of trailing ink that caught her eye, overcoming a deep and primal need for rest, for sleep because there it was, printed neatly across a fold of vellum and parchment.

_Arlessa Andridanya ves Tabris._

Andy was rather proud of herself for holding back a snort at that, or would be later, because hands that had previously been shakily coming down to rest at her sides instantly clenched tight, ripped and tugged at the envelope until a letter sprang free, thick, wadded thing, water stained and crooked from weeks of travel over sea and over land, but still legible. _My dear warden,_ it said, in a very familiar script, and she gasped aloud. Andy’s cheeks grew hot. Her hand flew up to her mouth, feeling the start of a smile curling there. As it did, it dislodged a second, smaller scrap of paper that fluttered out of the envelope when she lifted the letter high.

Curious, Andy plucked it out of the air. The script was different, written in an entirely different hand. Untidy and slanted and small, it scratched where he scrawled. For a long, horrible moment she didn’t know what she was looking at. And then she did. _I was lost in you. Your face, your hands,_ read a sentence. _YOUR CHEST,_ read another, _your chest. Your chest and your shoulders and your back, a rolling roving patch of tiered forests and hills that bend down to the water, shifting mountains that rise to skies of bunished gold and fire gone liquid, melting, running over._ For a moment she stared, lost, horrified embarrassment burning scarlet roses across her cheeks, biting her lip to hold back a squawk or a squeak, because that wasn’t it at all, there was something else written there on the back, she could see the shadow of it through the parchment. Paper being a valuable commodity, Andy oftentimes wrote on both sides of the paper. She knew she did that, had done that, will do that, and so it was with the utmost trepidation that she turned it over.

_ZEVRAN. LOVE YOU LIKE A LOVING THING. WANT TO BITE YOUR FINGERS._

Oh, oh no, oh fuckin no, no way, there was- she couldn’t have written it, not even drunk, but she had, she had, there it was and there she’d been and here was Zevran’s response, neat and tidy and curling a grin, in answer to hers.

 _My dear warden,_ it read, and she could practically see the curve of his self-satisfied smile in the curl of darkened vellum, hear the laugh in his voice that bubbled warm and rich as that sweet he so loved. _Your words are a balm to tired eyes and ears. I am afraid, unfortunately so, that I cannot find my way through the fog your eyes have set into my mind. I find myself stumbling for words, reaching at the smooth walls of description, poems of the last age that heaped praises on lips and hips and honeyed eyes, because you possess all of these things, it is true, but none of them fit half so well as the slant of your fingers, bent to a blade, or a pen, a cheek, curved and bent, pressing a smile into shape on ruddied skin gone to seed, to roses, blooming patches of scarlet silk fluttering in the winds of laughter. But perhaps the next time I will prove equal to the task, eh? It will give us some measure of things to consider between the letters winging their way across the tracks our own feet have trod._

_Yours, always._

_Z._

_Also,_ read another, smaller postscript that she almost missed, how small it was, tucked into the crease, _I wish to bite everything. To take the whole of you within my teeth, savor you, your flavours, the flavor of you running across my tongue and my lips and myself, but that it too far and too soon. And you have the sharpest teeth, I find myself shivering with anticipation._


End file.
